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The federal corruption case towards Senator Bob Menendez, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, and a trio of New Jersey businessmen started with allegations of tons of of hundreds of {dollars} value of gold bars and money “stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothes, closets, and a secure.” Now, it’s one way or the other taken a good darker flip, involving a deadly automobile crash.
New Jersey’s The Document newspaper and The New York Occasions each reported on Wednesday that Nadine Menendez, the spouse and codefendant of the New Jersey senator, struck and killed a person whereas driving via the city of Bogota, NJ, on December 12, 2018. In accordance with The Document, police information don’t present that Nadine Menendez, who was courting the senator on the time, was examined for medicine or alcohol or taken into custody. In accordance with dashcam video obtained the Occasions, she was joined at one level by a retired police officer who informed the cops, “I don’t even know her. That’s my buddy’s spouse who’s associates along with her. He stated might you do me a favor and take her up there, as a result of her pal simply received in a automobile accident.” A person whose parked automobile Menendez hit after placing the sufferer informed the Occasions that he didn’t know who she was on the time, however that it appeared like she was “somebody necessary.” He added, “I don’t know if she was well-known, or lived close by, or the police knew her, however there seemed to be loads of secrecy. I bear in mind saying, ‘That lady is simply allowed to depart? She’s not being arrested or something?’” Menendez was reportedly launched with out a summons.
In a police report filed the subsequent day, a Bogota sergeant reportedly wrote: “It’s decided that at the moment Ms. Arslanian was not at fault for the motorized vehicle crash and that [the victim, Richard] Koop was jaywalking.”
Whereas the crash was not talked about in final month’s indictment towards the Menendezes, it did observe that in January 2019, the month after Koop was killed, Nadine texted with businessman Wael Hana—one of many New Jersey businessmen charged within the alleged corruption scheme—complaining about not having a automobile. In accordance with the Occasions, Senator Menendez and one of many different businessman, Jose Uribe, “quickly agreed to phrases to rectify that.”
Rosemarie Koop-Angelicola, Koop’s sister, informed the Occasions that after the crash, the household heard from neither Nadine nor Bob Menendez, and never a lot from native authorities. “The household actually has had critical considerations over what we felt was a really sparse, one-sided investigation,” she stated. “Positively a scarcity of authorized enthusiasm to take this case, particular lack of media protection, and a scarcity of communication by the authorities of Bergen County. We felt that the entire thing was very silently swept beneath the rug.”
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